Bazaar Shop Fire with LPG, an Unlabelled Drum and a Child Reported Inside
21:40. A two-storey brick building on a bazaar street: the ground floor is a hardware and paint shop stacked with roughly 25 five-litre tins of thinner, a 12 kg LPG cylinder and an unlabelled 200-litre drum; the first floor is a three-room home where a family of five, two adults and children aged 2, 5 and 9, are reported to be asleep. The only internal staircase runs from the shop into the flat; the rear metal staircase has been welded shut. Fire is showing from the front shutter and thick grey-black smoke is pushing from the first-floor windows. Your first pump carries 1,800 litres and a four-person crew, plus you. The nearest hydrant is 300 m away and unserviced; the second pump is 12 minutes out. A neighbour insists a cylinder already exploded five minutes ago and that the family got out, while a woman at the window is shouting that her child is still inside.
1. Set out your mode of operation and first three tactical actions, justifying the choice against the conflicting information about the family.
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Offensive, but time-limited and water-limited. The woman at the first-floor window is a visible, credible casualty indicator: a live person on the floor we cannot otherwise see. That makes this a rescue, not a surround-and-drown. The neighbour's claim that the cylinder exploded and everyone got out is unverified, and even a venting cylinder is not proof of an empty building; an unverified claim never cancels a primary search.
Actions: a 45 mm line to the shop front to knock the ground-floor fire back and protect the stairwell, not to penetrate the shop; a ladder to the front window with a two-person search team working a systematic left- or right-hand pattern through the three rooms, taking the woman out first; and a second covering line at the front, kept dry until needed. Set a hard interior time limit of about ten minutes and never commit past the unlabelled drum. Ventilate only in coordination with the attack line: opening the shop front before water is on feeds the fire and pushes hot gas up the only staircase, which is where the children would be.
2. You have 1,800 litres and a second pump 12 minutes out. Explain your water plan and the trigger you would use to withdraw crews.
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1,800 litres through a 45 mm branch at roughly 200 to 400 litres per minute is five to nine minutes of water. That dictates tactics: the tank exists to buy the rescue window and knock the ground floor down, not to fight the building. Use the attack line in short bursts at the seat of the fire, keep the second line dry, and put one person on testing the hydrant 300 m away immediately. If it is dry, the realistic option is a tanker shuttle into a folding tank rather than a relay, because 300 m at 25 m per length is twelve lengths and may exceed the hose stock carried.
Announce the remaining water percentage every two minutes so the crew inside is working to the same picture as the pump operator. Withdrawal trigger: when the tank falls to about 25 per cent with no confirmed replenishment on scene, all crews come out and the incident goes defensive. A crew inside a bazaar building with no water is the error that kills firefighters, and no amount of property is worth that trade.
3. The 12 kg LPG cylinder has reportedly already vented, and a 200-litre unlabelled drum stands near the seat of the fire. What do these change, and how do you resolve the conflicting report of a child inside?
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The cylinder changes the approach even if it has vented: a heated cylinder can still fail catastrophically, and venting gas can flash back. Cool it from behind cover with a monitor or a distant stream, keep everyone outside the potential fragment zone, and expect a pressure wave and fireball if it lets go, which means crews work from the protected side of a wall, police push the crowd further back, and the cordon expands. The unlabelled drum is an unknown: assume flammable and toxic, do not commit anyone past it, and identify it from delivery papers, the shop owner or the supplier before any further entry.
For the child: the woman at the window is the primary source, and she is on the floor where a child would be, so search all three rooms systematically, mark each door as searched, and give a clear all-clear to the incident commander. Then hold a roll-call at the assembly point. If the child is unaccounted for, the search continues only while water and structure allow, and the decision to stop is declared and recorded by the commander.